I turned 65 on September 13th. When I was younger, I was led to believe that sixty-five was the year a working person could retire from their day job and collect a pension. That is no longer the case if it ever was. I am still working half-time to supplement my social security payments. Be that as it may. Sixty-five still seems to me to be one of those numerical markers of a human life. Hence this reflection.
I obviously don’t remember my birth. That memory is left to my father and mother (rest her soul). Indeed, the first memory of a birthday that is fairly complete took place on the evening of September 13, 1965. That was the day I turned ten. Our family lived in Peshawar, Pakistan at the time. My father was assigned to an outfit of the United States Air Force there. His job and the base itself had some role in monitoring communications and activities in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. It was one more outpost in the Cold War. For us kids who lived there, it was just another place to live; a somewhat exotic one, but still just another place we were taken to by our fathers in the US military.
The location is important to my story because what I am about to describe would not have happened to me and my family if we weren’t in Pakistan at the time. Over the course of the summer in 1965, a battle of words and troop movements had erupted into a war between India and Pakistan. The reason for the war (if there is ever a reason for war) was the disputed national entity of Kashmir. I remain fuzzy on the details even now, but suffice it to say both India and Pakistan wished to claim it as their own. Many Kashmiris preferred independence—a position nominally taken by the Pakistani government and still opposed by the rulers in Delhi. For most of the summer, the war between the two nations had not affected Peshawar very much and had not affected the USAF installation at all. However, when we began class at the base elementary school that fall, it was clear the adults were concerned about much more than our curriculum. My father finally shared some of that concern with me and my older sister one day. In short, he told us that there might be air raids on the local Pakistani military bases by the Indian air force. This meant that things would not be normal for a little while.
On September 12th, 1965 a couple of my siblings and I were playing in the yard when an air raid siren began to howl. My six-year-old brother began to cry. Mom came outside and comforted him while we gathered up our toys. She told us it was just a practice run, but that we should come inside anyway. Then, the all clear siren sounded. The next day was my birthday. I celebrated with my friends at school and in the evening we had my favorite dinner and cake. I opened presents and went to bed. At the time, I shared a room with my three younger brothers. They quickly fell asleep while I read a book using my flashlight for light. I dozed off around 9 PM. It was a little after ten that I awoke, startled by a succession of loud noises that started with a whistling sound and ended with an explosion that rattled the windows in our room. I got down from the top bunk and ran into my parents’ room. Both of them were awake. They instructed me to gather my brothers and sisters in the hallway. Within seconds all of us were there. My father told us not to worry. My mother held my youngest sister in her arms and we began to pray. Thirty or forty minutes later, the all clear signal sounded. The next day GIs painted the windows of every building on the base black. Other GIs dug air raid shelters in our backyards. We spent the next five nights in those shelters while planes bombed military and civilian areas not more than five and ten miles from the base. The ground shook with each explosion and the air filled with tracers from anti-aircraft guns and other weaponry. All of the women and children on base were evacuated to a US military base in Turkey on September 19th. We did not return to Peshawar until mid-December 1965.
The next few birthdays were not marked by any such events. However, a few days before my sixteenth birthday in 1971, prisoners at Attica State Prison in New York took over part of the prison. I was living in Frankfurt am Main in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. By then, my politics were decidedly leftist and my cultural pursuits were definitely counter. My dad and I argued often about the war in Vietnam, the racism of US society and the nature of freedom. These debates usually began at the dinner table and carried on into the night. My mother would occasionally ban politics from the dinner table. Naturally, I followed the reportage about the prison takeover with great interest. A friend of mine who was a member of the Black Panthers (and the first person to discuss theoretical Marxism with me) told me he feared the worst. My dad’s parents were visiting. While I was in class on September 13, 1971, the radio reported that Rockefeller had sent hundreds of cops into Attica with their guns blazing. The death toll was around forty. I was both angry and sorrowful. All those people murdered for no reason but power and pride. When we sat down to dinner, I was in no mood to hear my father try to justify the attack. Consequently, the conversation quickly escalated. Then, out of respect for my grandparents, we both changed the subject. The debate continued days later after my grandparents returned to the States.
As the years went on, other notable events occurred around my birthday. The fascist coup in Chile was one such event. I was in New York City then and went to numerous protests regarding the coup and US involvement in it. I cheered to myself when the Weather Underground blew a hole in the offices of one of the coup’s corporate sponsors—IT&T. I heard Phil Ochs sing at a rally in Union Square.
I was also in New York City on my birthday in 2001. Two days earlier, the Twin Towers had been destroyed when airplanes were intentionally crashed into them. I was staying with a friend in Chelsea. While the city attempted to make sense of what had happened and families of the victims dealt with their loss, it seemed like Rudy Giuliani’s face glared from television sets in every window of ever shop, tavern and restaurant. New Yorkers talked to each other and the only vehicles in the streets were in the service of the police and the military. My friend and I enjoyed each other’s company for a couple more days. I was trying to get back to Vermont, but there was no public transportation running. I woke up on my birthday and called Penn Station one more time. Amtrak was running a few trains. We said our lingering goodbyes and I headed up Eighth Avenue. I arrived at Penn Station and waited about thirty minutes to get into the building. Heavily armed military personnel were checking everyone’s identification and searching each individual’s luggage and selves. After going through the security gauntlet, I hurried to the Amtrak window and was able to purchase a ticket to Vermont. There was one more security check to board the train. Then we headed out of town. Back to Vermont and into a new, more authoritarian future of war, perennial economic distress, a virtual panopticon to augment greater repression and more.
As I turn sixty-five, I both wonder and fear for what the future holds. A president with greater fascist leanings than any president since Nixon sits in the White House. He exacerbates a pandemic as it cuts a deadly path across the nation with his intentionally ignorant attacks on science and rationality. His white supremacist allies and backers encourage law enforcement in its most reprehensible acts of repression and the president himself calls for retribution against those who protest his fascist tendencies. The future of this withering republic is at stake. I wonder how the world will look on my next birthday. To be more precise, I fear how the world will look on my next birthday.
I do hope I’ve figured out another (legal) way to supplement my Social Security check by then.
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